


Send My Cinders Home

by swords (zombiejosette)



Category: Dark Shadows (2012), Dark Shadows - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:26:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiejosette/pseuds/swords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Angelique lays eyes on her, Laura Murdoch is less a rainstorm than a forest fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Send My Cinders Home

**seventeen seventy-one.**  
She has an image of Laura before the two even meet. Dark hair, black as the night sky. Barnabas says the candlelight shines from it like the rise of the moon and his eyes go out of focus (eyes like a storm and skin as pale as the clouds; Barnabas has seen little but storm clouds in his twenty years and Angelique doubts his poetic ability).

When Angelique lays eyes on her, Laura Murdoch is less a rainstorm than a forest fire, and the flames hypnotize her. Too close, and the wariness sets in (it's an instinct, Angelique's found. Do not make eye contact. Do not speak to them. Do not lay hands or lips or words of love upon them. _Know your place._ ).

She stays at Collinwood and leaves ashes in her wake, shaped as dainty footprints across the floor. Soot along the walls for Angelique to scrub away, to keep them spotless, to clean their name when she surely ruins it with her sparks of words and her touches that burn (though Barnabas does not recoil, Angelique notices), every movement a tiny destruction in its own way.

Laura speaks to her. She tries not to listen. Tries to block the words from her mind but they seep through anyway and she's nothing to do but relent. Laura speaks of children with Barnabas so breathlessly. There's no air (the fire is snuffed), there's no pretense and there's hope, pure and bright and white hot and _Angelique, surely you'll be so lucky, as well. There are different ways to serve in the night hours._

She laughs. It mocks. It singes.

The flame catches.

There is no heir when the fire literally catches, consuming the Murdoch mansion on the outskirts of town, flames rising up, up, seen by ships for miles.

It's fitting, Angelique thinks (perhaps too much so, though no one reads her and no one questions and no one wanders into the cellar and there are no matches to find, no dry wood; they're all ashes with the Murdoch home). She keeps her distance and remains entranced and the smoke catches her dress and paints it black.

Barnabas does not watch.

**eighteen sixty.**  
She looks the same.

Skin more drawn, hair tighter atop her head and she does not glow, but her eyes are still like smoke and her whole form an inferno.

There was no body, Angelique reminds herself, shaking in the drawing room and she has to get out, she has to leave (why stay in a falling tower). There is nothing to have, nothing to take from her, but Angelique feels the fury surge within her and she will not have him.

Angelique wants nothing with Edward. He's an artifact, ancient at this point, bones dusty and withering before he's reached fifty but he's happy with her. His heart is ablaze and she's some warrior, walking through coals with a straight back and steady legs, ready to avenge them. The ring and Jameson's baby blanket serve as her armor.

The house is full of dead things (the house _is_ a dead thing) like a trail to set aflame, one last breath of life that crackles and rises and only fire can kill a witch. She keeps her doors locked at night and it's no use; she half expects Laura to fly in to her window like a crow, peering in with those eyes and that grin of hers. 

"I've a terrible aversion to being alone," Laura confesses one evening - though it's less a confession and more of a brag, a trap, a way to snare her, Angelique knows.

Angelique does not say anything. 

Laura adds, "It's the only way to find peace - to have those who know you and understand you. Those who are a part of you."

Jameson begins to cry in his mother's arms.

When the parched wood of the boathouse goes up in flames, Angelique is the one to cover Jameson's ears to block the screams of his mother, to hide his eyes, to keep him locked against her in the cool night air.

She will rule them (she does rule them), after all. A queen must not let her subjects die. _Know your place._

**nineteen sixty-three.**  
When Laura perches, it's at Collinwood once more.

She attends their wedding as a statement, grips Laura's hand like ice and grins as she says, "Let me be the first to congratulate you."

Roger laughs nervously. Laura takes it in stride. She flares up in the doorway and he cannot exit and Angelique swears even she can feel the sweat beading down the back of his neck.

"You're always the first, aren't you?" she says.

It sears. _Know your place._

She leaves and they're happy and there's a child early the next year. Laura spreads her wings and they do take flight. Laura and Roger and tiny David never growing up in that coffin of a home on a hill. They live and they're everywhere all at once, bright and laughing and happy.

It's a match dropped into Angelique's bones.

Laura is fire in a corrupted form (personified, some would say, but Angelique knows better). In a town built with water, it's foolish to fall in with those who think they own it.

She's so easy to douse.

David is five and he watches his mother fall from their boat. It's an easy slip with no sound and she reaches for him and Angelique does not allow herself to laugh, no. She sends condolences, flowers that are too bright, " _And she didn't call for help? I'm sorry for your loss,_ " honey-smooth over the phone.

Laura does not resurface.

**nineteen seventy-two.**  
She tumbles from her portrait, inelegant and unpredictable, hair a mess of dark curls falling from an aristocratic bun as she throws her hands to catch herself on the hardwood floor.

She gasps for air. She coughs. It stings. But her heart beats in her unsheltered chest, whole and living as she gets to her feet.

Laura sits at the head of her desk, drip, drip, dripping onto the floor and Angelique's nails dig into the back of a chair and she snarls, "You did this."

She looks old. Bags under her eyes, hair matted, face gaunt; too drowned to be even an ember now. Angelique takes pride in this.

" _You_ did," Laura says with fervor. 

Know your place.

It's a cycle, she knows, they know. A waltz; round and round till someone falls, then right back up, again and again.

( _Let me go with my child,_ Laura will tell her in a rasp. Easily spoken but the underlying desperation will be delicious. Sweet like incense. "Let me go with David and we'll be rid of each other. Aren't you ever tired?"

Angelique's lips, bright red, will blow cigarette smoke toward her, and she will shake her head.)

Laura's eyes are a pyre in their own right.


End file.
